November 28,
2013 "Information
Clearing House - "WSWS"
- This
year’s Thanksgiving holiday, coming more than five years after
the Wall Street crash, highlights the devastating impact of mass
unemployment and budget cuts on tens of millions of Americans.
It underscores as well the increasing concentration of wealth in
the hands of a tiny elite.

Even as
food banks across the country report increasing demand and
dwindling supplies, the US media is obsessed with snowstorms,
travel delays and Black Friday sales. There is barely a mention
of the intractable unemployment, poverty, hunger and
homelessness that impact millions.

Judging by
the media coverage, one would never suspect that the United
States is a country where, according to a July 2013 report by
the Associated Press, “Four out of five US adults struggle with
joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least
parts of their lives.”

In cities
throughout the country, people have lined up by the hundreds for
Thanksgiving food distributions, recalling the bread lines of
the 1930s. Food banks are reporting rising demand not only from
the unemployed, but also from the growing ranks of the working
poor.

The dire
conditions created by years of economic slump have been
compounded by cutbacks in food stamp benefits that took effect
at the beginning of this month, eliminating the equivalent of
two days of food every month. Extended unemployment benefits are
set to expire for millions of people on December 31, throwing
them even further into destitution.

Amid such
shocking poverty and misery—and incessant claims that there is
no money to do anything about it—the stock market is setting new
records every day. Over the past week, the Dow Jones Industrial
Average has hit 16,000, the Standard & Poor’s 500 stock index
has reached 1,800, and the NASDAQ has once again topped 4,000.

The
giddy—and unsustainable—rise of stock prices, which is
propelling the personal fortunes of the rich and the super-rich
to ever more astronomical heights, is being deliberately
engineered by the Obama administration and the Federal Reserve
Board. Near-zero interest rates and $85 billion a month in cash
infusions from the Fed into the financial markets are
facilitating an accelerated transfer of wealth from the bottom
to the very top of the social ladder.

This week,
the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
reported that US life expectancy has sunk below the
international average, dropping below that of Greece, Portugal,
South Korea and Slovenia. One of the starkest indices of the
social crisis is the rise in the number of Americans receiving
food stamps from 28.2 million in 2008 to 47.7 million this year,
an increase of 70 percent.

The
response of the political establishment to the growth in need
has been to slash benefits in advance of the holidays. The $5
billion in food stamp cuts implemented at the start of November
are only the beginning, with the Democrats proposing to cut an
additional $4 billion in food stamps as a “sensible” alternative
to more than $40 billion in cuts proposed by the Republicans.

The social
chasm in America is reflected in a concentrated manner in New
York City, the country’s largest metropolis and the home of Wall
Street. Ninety-six billionaires live in the city. On average,
they own four homes, each one worth nearly $20 million, as well
as one or two yachts, a private jet or two, and a small army of
domestic servants. Their combined wealth is more than three
times the city’s annual budget.

Across the
Harlem River from Manhattan lies the Bronx, the poorest of New
York’s five boroughs. There, half of all children live in
households that do not have enough to eat, according to a report
issued this week by the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

In
America’s second-largest city and the center of the film
industry, Los Angeles, the City Council is debating whether to
follow the lead of Philadelphia and Seattle and ban the
distribution of food to the homeless in public places.

Detroit,
the historical center of American manufacturing, has been thrown
into bankruptcy by an unelected emergency manager, who is using
his emergency powers to rip up the pensions and health benefits
of tens of thousands of city workers and sell off the city’s
assets, including the world-famous art collection at the Detroit
Institute of Arts. The billions stolen from the working class
are to be handed over to the banks and major holders of city
bonds.

The
decline in living standards of broad sections of the population
is not even raised as a significant issue by the Obama
administration, the political establishment as a whole, or the
corporate-controlled media. There is hardly a pretense that the
present situation is a temporary aberration. Nor are any
policies proposed to improve the conditions of life of working
people.

Instead,
mass unemployment, growing poverty and increasing social
inequality are casually described as the “new normal.”

This
social reality is an indictment of the entire political order
and the capitalist system it serves. It is, moreover, the rule,
not the exception, all over the world.

For the
working class, things will only get worse so long as political
and economic control is left in the hands of a parasitic
financial aristocracy and its political representatives. Social
opposition is mounting and will take explosive forms in the US,
as it has begun to do in Egypt, Greece and other countries.

The
defense of the most basic social rights—to a job, a decent wage,
health care, education, a decent retirement, access to culture
and art—requires a struggle against the two corporate-controlled
parties and the financial oligarchy. The critical issue is the
building of a new leadership in the working class—the Socialist
Equality Party—to arm the coming struggles with an independent
socialist program.

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